Rudy Giuliani Is at the Center of the Trump Impeachment Investigation

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Congress’s impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump is going to look a whole lot like an investigation of Rudy Giuliani. The president’s personal lawyer, public attack dog, and shadow diplomat is at the center of the storm brewing over Trump’s attempt to pry damaging information about Vice President Joe Biden out of Ukraine. Whatever happens, Giuliani will play a pivotal role.

Among the questions House Democrats are asking: What is the extent of Giuliani’s involvement in Trump’s effort to dig up dirt on a potential political rival? Already, House Democrats have called several of Giuliani’s business partners and government contacts to testify, and demanded that he produce documents related to his communications with a range of associates in Kiev and within the U.S. Department of State. “He could claim an attorney-client privilege and refuse to testify,” says John Barrett of St. John’s University School of Law. “And I’m not sure it would be worth the House’s time and trouble to challenge such claims in court.”

Giuliani has flip-flopped publicly on whether he’ll cooperate. Reached by phone on Oct. 1, he declined to comment on whether he’d comply with the subpoena. By then he’d also hired his old friend Jon Sale, an assistant to Watergate Special Prosecutors Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski, to represent him in the subpoena fight. Sale says he can’t say yet whether Giuliani will comply. “It’s a complex issue,” he says. “A lot of potential privileges.”

The crusading prosecutor who took down dirty financiers and dirtier organized crime lords as a U.S. attorney in the 1980s and became known briefly as “America’s Mayor” after the Sept. 11 attacks now faces several forms of legal jeopardy, all stemming from his unofficial, ill-defined role within the Trump administration. Before Giuliani began working as Trump’s unpaid personal lawyer in the probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, he was a prominent Trump campaign surrogate and briefly thought to be a contender for secretary of state.

As the House barrels ahead with its impeachment inquiry, Senate Democrats have zeroed in on Giuliani’s private consulting business and whether he’s broken federal lobbying laws by selling his services to foreign leaders, including prominent clients in Ukraine. Since Trump took office, Giuliani has earned fees from Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk and advised the mayor of the eastern city of Kharkiv in a contract paid for by Pavel Fuks, another Ukrainian oligarch. On Sept. 25, seven Democratic senators wrote to the U.S. Department of Justice, renewing a demand for an investigation into Giuliani’s contracts with foreign clients originally made a year earlier.

At the same time, former prosecutors say, Giuliani could be in violation of the Logan Act, a rarely enforced federal statute that forbids private citizens from conducting unauthorized negotiations with foreign governments that have disputes with the U.S. In early May, the State Department unexpectedly recalled Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador in Kiev, whom Giuliani falsely accused of helping bring to light secret payments made by the party of Ukraine’s then-President Viktor Yanukovych to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

According to a whistleblower complaint made public on Sept. 26, Giuliani also spent months reaching out to Kiev through back channels in an effort to persuade officials to dig up dirt on Biden and his son Hunter, who sat on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings. Giuliani’s claim, which has been debunked by officials in the U.S., Ukraine, and European Union, is that Biden pushed for the ouster of Ukraine’s prosecutor general in 2016 to quash a probe into Burisma.

The whistleblower’s allegations principally concern a July 25 phone call between Trump and newly elected Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. According to a summary of the call released by the White House, Trump asked Zelenskiy to do him a “favor” and investigate a conspiracy theory that fixes blame for interference in the 2016 election on Ukraine instead of Russia. Then Trump asked his counterpart to investigate the Bidens, saying twice that he’d have Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr follow up. On Oct. 1, Zelenskiy stated at a press conference that he’d had no contact with Giuliani by phone or in person.

Giuliani has said his overtures to Ukrainian officials were sanctioned by the State Department, but the whistleblower complaint makes the situation appear otherwise. The document describes efforts by former U.S. Special Representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, to help Ukrainian officials make sense of the different messages they were getting from Giuliani and through official channels.

Volker, who resigned as the investigation into Trump’s behavior began to gain momentum, didn’t respond to a request for comment. He was scheduled to appear before the House Intelligence Committee to give a deposition on the matter on Oct. 3, which could help clarify whether Giuliani was acting on behalf of the government or Trump. At press time, it wasn’t clear when that testimony would be made public, if at all.

“Whatever Rudy was doing, the question was, what did Trump know about that, and did Trump direct it?” says Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor and frequent presidential critic. “If Trump directed Rudy’s activities, then he’s criminally responsible for them.” Trump’s Justice Department is unlikely to pursue an investigation of Giuliani, especially given that Barr’s own conduct is being questioned as part of the whistleblower complaint.

Giuliani isn’t the first Trump fixer to come under fire since he’s been in office. His predicament recalls the one that confronted Michael Cohen, who once served as Trump’s personal lawyer and factotum. Cohen’s hush-money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election served as the basis for a wide-ranging federal investigation of his financial records and tax returns, resulting in multiple felony convictions and a three-year prison sentence. Cohen eventually flipped on the president, testifying before Congress that Trump had directed him to pay off Daniels. During that unfolding drama, Giuliani became the president’s cudgel on TV, slamming Cohen as an “incredible liar.”

So far, Giuliani has given no indication that he’ll abandon the president to save himself. In this, he may be like another former presidential aide who once came under fire from Congress, G. Gordon Liddy. An operative on President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign, Liddy refused to testify before the Senate on his role in the Watergate break-in. He was eventually convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping and served 52 months in prison. —With David Voreacos
 
Read more: Who’s Who—The Americans at the Center of Trump’s Ukraine Gambit and  Where Rudy Giuliani’s Money Comes From

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jillian Goodman at jgoodman74@bloomberg.net

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